Media Technology & Innovation

Network Technology Seminar 2014

23 Jun 2014
EBU, Geneva

NTS 2014 covered the latest developments in the field of networking, studio networks, future networks, interfaces, time & sync, storage, contribution, clouds and virtualization. It is a key meeting point for the experts in these fields.

It was an important year for facilities that are moving away from a broadcast-specific (SDI) infrastructure to an IT-based one. Alhtough the industry has started to offer various ways to integrate audio and video components into network-based studios, they are not necessarily interoperable. Many media companies which are designing new facilities soon will have to choose the technology that will form the basis for all of their operations. That is not an easy task, especially as it is a decision that carries long-term consequences. The EBU's Network Technology Seminar will help users by providing an overview of the options available in this domain and the outlook in terms of their deployment.

This years NTS covered the new networking concepts, use cases of new studios, inclucing the BBC's Virtual Local Radio concept, CBC/Radio-Canada's new control room model and the Low Bandwidth Remote Production approach offered by Eurovision. Technologies for Time & Synchronization (by the IRT) and Multi-Channel audio over IP (from the AES) also were explained. Tutorials were offered for a deeper look into Time Sensitive Networks (or AVB), Software Defined Networking and Professional Multi-Channel Audio over IP.

The second day of NTS covered other important aspects of the media production infrastructure: Contribution, Storage and Network Techniques and Optimization. Finally, the closing keynote from CERN provided a glimpse of the huge potential of using IT by looking at the power hungry domain of physics computing. The keynote may actually offer a comforting message to media representatives, because however complicated the current network challenges may be, they are dwarfed by the requirements subatomic particle research puts on technology.